Bipin Chandra Pal was born on November 7, 1858 in Sylhet, (now in Bangladesh), in a wealthy Hindu Kayastha family. His father was Ramchandra Pal. He was a teacher, journalist, orator, writer and librarian who started the journal Bande Mataram.

He was one of the trilogy of the three Extremist patriots of the Indian National Congress who had fought and gave his life during Indian independence movement in the first half of the twentieth century. The other two were Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Together they were known as Lal-Bal-Pal. They had advocated extremist means to get their message across to the British, like boycotting British manufactured goods, burning Western clothes made in the mills of Manchester and strikes and lock outs of British owned businesses and industrial concerns. He came under the influence of eminent Bengali leaders of his time such as Keshab Chandra Sen and Pandit Sivanath Sastri, and joined the Brahmo Samaj. He was imprisoned for six months on the grounds of his refusal to give evidence against Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram sedition case.